CAIRO — President Barack Obama delivered a direct appeal to the Islamic world Thursday for a “new beginning” with the United States, acknowledging historical mistakes made over centuries in the name of culture and religion that he said are now overshadowed by shared interests.
The 55-minute address electrified many Muslims in the Arab Middle East. The president celebrated the cultural, scientific and intellectual achievements of Islam to the delight of the audience inside the domed hall at Cairo University where he spoke — and beyond.
Using spare language and a measured explanatory tone, the country’s first African-American president, whose Kenyan family has deep Islamic roots, drew on history, biography, moral principles and mutual interests to dispel cultural stereotypes that divide Christians and Muslims, Arabs and Jews, and the United States from many in the Islamic faith. Seemingly small but symbolically important gestures by Obama drew warm applause, including his use of the phrase “May peace be upon him” following a reference to the Prophet Muhammad. Speaking in Arabic, he offered the traditional greeting of “May peace be upon you” on behalf of the American people to applause.
As he urged leaders in the Muslim world to “place the interests of your people and the legitimate workings of the political process above your party,” a man shouted, “Barack Obama, we love you!”
The president responded simply, “Thank you,” and moved quickly back into his remarks. At the end of the speech, he received a standing ovation and some in the crowd chanted “O-Bam-A, O-Bam-A.”
“Egypt also has suffered from terrorism,” said Ahmed el-Shoura, a 21-year-old political science student at Cairo University who attended the speech. “The question is how do you deal with it — through the military or something else? Obama showed today that understands this difference and how to manage it.”
Obama quoted John Adams, the Koran, the Bible and the Talmud to argue that “as long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, those who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help all of our people achieve justice and prosperity.”
“This cycle of suspicion and discord must end,” Obama said. “I’ve come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition.”
The highly anticipated speech drew about 3,000 invited guests, including 500 journalists, to Cairo University and an audience of tens of millions more watching over national television networks, social-networking sites, and instant-messaging services set up by the administration in a variety of languages.
The speech marked Obama’s most high-profile attempt to change the direction of U.S. relations with Islamic nations that traced a steady downward arc through the Bush administration.
Much of his mission was to convince Muslims that the United States is “not, and never will be, at war with Islam,” as he reiterated Thursday.
“Just as Muslims do not fit a crude stereotype, America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire,” he said. “The United States has been one of the greatest sources of progress that the world has ever known.”
